


premonitions

by alynshir



Category: Kingdoms of Amalur
Genre: Backstory, F/F, Gen, I Will Create It, Meta, Pre-Canon, also i wrote this in like 2015, before the game, fateweavers, if they will not Give It To Me, this is an alyn shir backstory fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23043286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alynshir/pseuds/alynshir
Summary: She'd never cared much for Fateweavers. They always were too much, too soon - and pardon her for preferring to live in the present.
Relationships: Fateless One/Alyn Shir
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	1. i - the fool

**Author's Note:**

> this is one piece i wrote in 2015 that i've broken up into chapters just simply for the Aesthetic !! pls enjoy :]

_ Young, yielding, 'useless', running through the twilight city on bare, battered feet, just another evening, just another evasion. Commonplace, for her..  _

_ "Hey, you," someone shouts behind her, but she ignores them, running, running, loaf of bread clutched to her chest, burning her hands.  _

_ "Catch her!" someone else shouts, and as she skids around a corner and slides into a sidestreet, soles shredding on the stone, she cannot help but smile at the sheer audacity of the idea. She has never been caught, not in the twilight city, not in her twilight city, not where she can be lost within a heartbeat. Her city protects her, and she protects others to repay it. _

_ The flutter of her footsteps is the only thing in her ears, that and her heartbeat, heartbeat like a hummingbird's wings and footsteps like its feathers.  _

_ "Stop," a voice says, abruptly nearby as she streaks past, a blur of black hair and torn skirts. She doesn't expect arms made of what felt like iron to snag her out of midair, grabbing her around the waist and yanking her backwards. _

_ "Let go of me!" she hisses, kicking and squirming with all her might. Of course it does nothing against the strength of the hindrance: a man, she thinks, who speaks again - _

_ "Stop." _

_ Just as she is about to reach for the stolen dagger tucked into the front of her grimy blouse, a surge of noise, of footsteps that aren't hers and aren't his, and the struggling sounds die in her throat as she and her hindrance watch guards tear by. Whether they pursue her or another - her city is fraught with pursuits, be they of the mind or of the feet - is unknown, but the realisation that this man might very well have saved her life dawns on her as the sun does the city.  _

_ When the guards have passed and are long-lost in the labyrinth of the city, the man - for indeed, she can tell this is a man by the way he breathes and the way he shifts his weight to maintain his grip on her - releases her. Instead of bolting, as she would had the circumstances not been so odd, she takes a few steps so her back is pressed against the dusty brick of the building that forms a sidestreet. _

_ "How did you -" she begins to ask, peering up at him suspiciously, but her question dwindles as the man - hooded, clearly hiding from something - holds up cards; a deep plum with spidery gold lacing. There are three of them in his dirty hand, and she cannot help thinking how much they might sell for. _

_ "These." _

_ "You're one of those," she says slowly, furrowing her brow as she tries to remember a word that to her had been useless in nearly every other circumstance. "Fatereaver?" _

_ "Fateweaver," he corrects, holding up a finger. It is long and thin and she thinks it might break easily, like a kindling stick, were somebody to try. "Not reaver." _

_ "You can see the future, then?" she asks, and the man dips his head in confirmation. A long, red, beaded braid dangles past his hood, and she wonders if it would hurt were she to tug on it. Not that she plans to, not to this man, but she has done such things before. _

_ "Your future, today," he elaborates, and he slips the cards into a pouch at his waist. It could be secured better, and she knows she could swipe it if she wanted. While she is curious, she is not stupid, and this man has saved her life. He nods at the loaf of bread clutched in her hands, still burning. "If you leave now, you can get to the children with that before dark." _

_ She cannot help the widening of her eyes when he speaks of the children, the skeletal children who are not strong enough to steal for themselves so she does it for them, yes, those children. She knows he sees it too, because she hears a smile in his voice as she steps away from him and the sidestreet. _

_ "Goodbye, Alyn Shir," he says, and she turns back, confused. _

_ "That's not my name." _

_ "Not yet. But perhaps it will be," he says, a laugh in his voice as he turns to go back the way she had come. "Be on your way." _


	2. ii - the hierophant reversed

_ She's never counted birthdays before, but she certainly doesn't feel old enough for this sort of thing as she stands over the man, knees shaking and the bloodied rock still clutched in one white-knuckled fist.  _

_ His true victim is abandoned, abandoned on the side of the alley where nobody would have found the body for days. Not that anyone save her would have been looking. The torn scrap of rotten, worthless bread pilfered from the trash heap is still clutched in the child's limp fist, and even now she can feel the staring, dead eyes cauterising her throat shut as she tries to breathe. _

_ The wind flutters weakly around her shoulders, a feeble attempt at comfort as her heart races and the sky storms. She can feel a vein pulsing in her neck and her breath coming short between her cracked lips, she can feel the bruising from the man's hands start burning on her cheek and wrists and throat as she drops to her knees besides the cold man, the silent man, the still man, the dead man.  _

_ She tries to remember later, fights her hardest not to forget, that he was a bad man, cruel and that she'd done what she had to do. But she cannot help noticing the tear-streaked face of the baker's little boy when next she passes, note how his mother tells him in hushed, cracked murmurs that his father is not coming home. Creating death, she decides, is something she wants no part in, if she can avoid it. She is not so young as to swear it off completely, but as she tries in vain, weeks later, to scrub the man's long-gone blood off of her fingertips and out from under her ragged nails, she vows to never be old enough to see it as the only option, to never see it as the eternal necessity.  _


	3. iii - justice

_ It is futile, she thinks, as she pulls off her gloves finger by finger. She shouldn't even bother washing her hands anymore. The stains will never come out of her hands, no matter what soap she uses, and she needs to stop scrubbing them raw or she'll never be able to use her daggers properly. And that simply will not do. _

_ A graduation, then, seems in order. She hasn't forgotten that day with the bruises and the man and the bloody rock in her hand. Since then, she's moved up in the world, a girl of what her first employer has deemed 'fourteen'. She isn't sure how accurate that is; she thinks she's been alive a bit longer, but then again, she could be wrong. Keeping track of years had never been high on her list of priorities until quite recently. _

_ Now she has to - she has to know everything. Her employer, a balding man of perhaps Varani origin, started off by paying her three gold pieces a day to simply listen, to hear everything that went on in the world, and to make sure everything the man wanted was going according to plan. (Not that she really knows what the man wants, even now, but she knows how to look, and that's what matters.) He hired her, thinking of her as any street rat, but she, any old urchin? Laughable. She may have lived homeless, nameless, lifeless, but if there is one thing she would never allow herself be, it is ordinary. She proved her mettle, she must have - she went to such risks to procure this man's information, she even stole into the Scholia Arcana to follow someone - for she remembers the fondness in his eyes when they landed on her. Perhaps this was the first time she had ever experienced someone else's fondness for her. It isn't true fondness, she knows that at least - true fondness doesn't cost gold or information. But for a moment, the street rat could pretend somebody cares.  _

_ She remembers, as she leans back into a pillow - a pillow! A true novelty; she had only ever heard of such things - the evening she showed up, brimming with the day's information, when he had spoken of a particular merchant and offered her the hilt of something she would never have been able to afford in a lifetime. He hadn't told her to kill, interestingly enough, although as she nestles into the alien comfort of a rented bed, she recalls the knot of fear, dread, and excitement tightening in the pit of her stomach. He had only told her to 'deal with them'. And she had. And the guards had been furious, and another family had been distraught, but there were five gold pieces in her pouch from then on. _

_ Funny, how things turned out. _


	4. iv - the moon

_ Necessity, she finds as the years go by, is a grey word, because it is defined by the user.  _

_ For example, she finds that sometimes words are more prudent to use in certain situations. Words have never been her strong suit - she has always been one to do, to try, to act, never to speak - but she finds they are much more of a necessity than her blades are. After all, words are often sharper than blades. Is that how the proverb goes? She has never been too fond of proverbs. _

_ Although, with each event she slips into, each stolen dress she lifts above her ankles and each pair of ridiculous shoes that make her feel too tall, she finds herself bombarded with questions sharper than arrows. This particular event is no different, and of course it starts out as a barrage of questions she cannot evade for the life of her. _

_ "Where do you hail from?" (Her twilight city, but she hasn't been there in over a year, and she wonders if it would be more appropriate to say she hails from whoever her mother was instead.) _

_ "What brings you here tonight?" (Business, actually, she's supposed to be assassinating the host of the evening. But that's not proper to say in conversation, is it? Pleasure it is, then.) _

_ "A pleasure to see you again, milady. You clean up quite nicely." (The third time she has heard something along those lines tonight; and no, she won't be accompanying them, or as is more likely, him into the next dance. She has work to do.) _

_ 'What is your name?' she finds, is the hardest question to answer, simply because she has never had one. _

_ (Perhaps that is wrong; supposedly everyone is given one by their parents as an infant. But if she was given one, she cannot recall ever learning it, as she also cannot recall ever having parents.) _

_ If it is someone who is inclined to find her attractive, she is typically able to escape with a flutter of her lashes and a smile as she slips away. _

_ (Not a true smile, mind you, a small twitch of the top lip into a smirk - there is no such thing as a true smile in this new world she's stumbled into.)  _

_ But if it is that they are not so inclined, as she finds most frustrating, she ends up standing there and lying, sweating in a dress that has too many layers and that she wouldn't be able to move more than a few steps in, assuming she was required to take any sort of action at all. _

_ Sometimes she makes up names. Clara, Gale, Bethan, she's found those names resonate best with the Almain and Varani. Gwen, Siobhan, the Ljosalfar and her own Dokkalfar respond best to those. She likes making up these names. She even gives herself little stories for them sometimes, those names that use her face and pretends to be someone else. Clara is a street orphan, who always gathers pity from the nobles she speaks to, Bethan was brought up by jottuns, which always garners wild intrigue. Gwen is the daughter of a minor noble, which leads to tricky conversations consisting of 'who's your father, do I know him? or is it your mother's side? you do look familiar', so she doesn't use Gwen as much. She hasn't gotten to the others yet; she'd never been the most creative - or perhaps creating had never been worthy of her time, as an assassin, as a destroyer. Perhaps it had never been her place to create anyway. _

_ Today, she attends what will soon become the scene of a crime, a murder committed by who knows who, and people will mourn and smile through their tears. Today feels different, today feels special.  _

_ "Welcome! What's your name?" a boy asks. He is young and lanky, clearly uncomfortable in the embroidered doublet she suspects his mother had to force him into. She smiles at him, a half smile as false as the clipped-in ends of her hair when she feels the golden family ring on his finger as he clasps hands with her. This is ring that labels him host and heir to a fortune. This is her target tonight, and she nearly falters, because this is hardly even a man, not a fair fight. She has taught herself to grow cold at the prospect of taking lives, but never has anyone ever paid her to murder a child. What could be gained from this? (She could answer that, but she doesn't want to.) _

_ This isn't fair on him, on her, on anyone.  _

_ She remembers a man with cruel hands and a child with dead eyes on the side of the alley who simply wanted a breadcrumb, and she remembers her bloodied rock. _

_ "Alyn," she says, remembering how sometimes life isn't fair and how Fate is often unkind, particularly to children. "Alyn Shir." _


	5. v - the wheel of fortune

_ She'd never bothered learning how to swim as a child. What sort of street rat would ever need to know? It wasn't like they ever expected to leave the alleys anyways, let alone the city.  _

_ But now, as she stands in the barely-lit room in the darkest corner of Rathir, Alyn Shir feels like she's been thrown into the deep end of a lake fraught with threshes, and their roots have already wrapped about her ankles to drag her down, down, down to where there is no light at all. _

_ She's heard whispers, of course, whispers of names that glow even when spoken and of treasures and lands beyond the commoner's imagination. But these people, these people do not use the shadow like she does. They are the shadow itself, and they have much more than whispers to lure her in. These people have power and gold and with that these people have her, these people have her dangling between their fingers like a pretty puppet on a string. Or, at least it feels that way. She has to keep reminding herself that she has her own agenda, she has her own dictated path to follow. These people are merely a stop on the way.  _

_ "So here you are," a voice says, and Alyn hears a door close behind light footsteps, casual footsteps, confident footsteps. "The notorious Alyn Shir, I presume."  _

_ "I wouldn't go so far as notorious," Alyn defers, but privately, she thinks the word is actually quite appropriate.  _

_ "I would," the voice disagrees, and the footsteps draw closer, bringing a flicker of what Alyn thinks is either a blade or armor into the light before it is gone again. "I've seen your work. You're good." It pauses, and makes a sound Alyn thinks perhaps might be a scoff. "Even in that getup, you're good. But see, I don't need good." _

_ "We're both aware I'm far better than good," she replies, her voice flat and obvious, as if the statement is not unlike ones such as 'the sky is blue' or 'boggarts are irritating'.  _

_ "I don't need that either. I don't need better."  _

_ She wonders if the person has a broken rib, or one healed improperly; their breathing hitches on occasion.  _

_ "I need the best," they specify, and Alyn sees what she thinks might be the tip of a pointed ear: one of her own, then, maybe, or a Ljosalfar. Although she's never met a Ljosalfar with this much of a flair for the dramatic. She's thinking more along the lines of Dokkalfar. "Only the best are worth a single moment of my time." _

_ "In that case, it is a good thing I'm here. We wouldn't want to waste any more time," Alyn agrees, and she thinks her heart skips a bit, flutters nervously. It hasn't done that in a while.  _

_ "I like you, Shir, I do, but I need to know that I'm putting my trust in the right woman," the voice says, pacing around her like a wolf circling a rabbit. Only metaphorically, of course, since Alyn is no rabbit. Perhaps, once, but no more. _

_ "You are." _

_ "Let's check just to be sure. Let's see, right?" _

_ "Daggers, of course, that's obvious," the voice says, and Alyn can feel eyes scouring her. She shifts slightly, feeling fire behind the eyes on her. "Did you make the bikini out of belts?" the person questions, cold laughter in their voice, and Alyn has to resist gritting her teeth. "Stilettos in the boots, and - are they coated in scarlet flowstone dust?" Genuine intrigue colors the person's voice as it draws closer, and Alyn can feel the words as the person asks them, right beside her ear, tempting her to turn. "Clever, I hadn't considered that. How does it work?" _

_ "You tell me your secrets, and I'll tell you mine," Alyn retorts, not turning, and the voice fades back into the shadows. _

_ "Do you know our cause?" they ask, and Alyn shakes her head. _

_ "No." _

_ "Good. You're going to find out." A person steps out of the shadows; a woman, with dark, cold eyes that she can't tell the color of and a smirk that tells her so little that Alyn actually feels coursing up her spine, a shiver of fear, an emotion she'd considered lost forever. "Welcome aboard." _


	6. vi - the emperor reversed

_ It occurs to her one night, as she keeps watch for her third shift in a row that evening, that she never has learned the woman's name.  _

_ This strikes her as completely ridiculous at first; they have been together for years.  _

_ (And by together, she means they've fought together. Any other meaning of the word has been discarded without question, with adamancy that left her feeling scalded, retreating, rejected.) _

_ She's saved this woman's life many times before, although more often than not the concept had found Alyn standing uncomfortably on guard while the woman patched herself back together. She's never let anyone touch her, a wounded animal recoiling from any aid Alyn could perhaps offer. This woman's saved her life too, fended off more would-be fatal blows than Alyn can count.  _

_ (Not that she can count terribly high, truth be told - she never was good with numbers, and she's maintained that absence of skill even as she became more of a name whispered to children at night - but the sentiment is still there.) _

_ But it is odd, and uncomfortable, that Alyn's life has been in the hands of this woman - figuratively, since the woman has said herself that everyone, including Alyn, is a waste of her time unless they're being useful. Alyn isn't sure how true that is to her colleague, but she's never questioned it. The woman had never taken well to being questioned, even with the most careful of tones, and with the best of intentions. There's something to this woman's anger, Alyn thinks that's more wounded than malicious, something that's healed poorly and hitched on a broken rib, but perhaps it doesn't matter, anyway. This woman is who she is, and that is someone who wants no one truly at her back but the wall.  _

_ She never does ask the woman's name. Such information is useless, and she remembers when she was useless. She'll never go back to that. It feels like it was a lifetime ago, and she plans to keep it there. It's ironic, Alyn finds, that in all of her years, this is the closest she's ever had to an ally - daresay to a friend. Which is pathetic, really, considering that this woman stares right through her, never making real eye contact, and Alyn's fairly sure she'd never care to see anything beyond Alyn's use. Pitiful. _

_ And with this in mind, she'd never expected to grieve when she hears that the woman has died on her wild goose chase to do the impossible. But it hurts just the same, expectations be damned. _

_ Now she is alone again, just as fate seems to insist, and who is she to question it? _


	7. vii - death

It's sort of funny, actually, if one ignores the death of an innocent, that the Fateweaver before her is dead. She wonders if he'd seen it in his precious cards, violet cards now lying soaked in burgundy on the floor. 

But he is dead, and therefore useless, and if she had time perhaps she would at least start some sort of pyre for him, because as she knows too well, unknown and abandoned is no way to meet Fate. 

The door opens unexpectedly, and she whirls around, her hand going to her hip to grab for her daggers. Instead, she sees eyes the color of the Sidhe and her breath catches in her throat.

No scars.

No hitch in the breath.

No recognition.

Eyes the color of the Sidhe. Wide eyes, dynamic, like rivers instead of ice. She is dynamic now, yes, Alyn likes this word, because the woman she remembers was winter and autumn and bitter winds, and this woman shares the same face but has eyes that shine with summer.

"Interesting. You’re not at all what I expected to find here," she says truthfully, but what she really wants to say, to shout, to demand, is much louder and much angrier and is a festered wound that had months since healed. Only for this woman to rip off the bandage now, and then claim memory loss.  Alyn would be offended, really, offended and hurt that she doesn't remember her, if she wasn't looking at her like that. Like she's real. Like she's the most crucial thing she's ever seen. 

Nobody's ever looked at her like that.

"What is your name?" she asks inevitably, suddenly years younger and yearning for an answer to a question she herself couldn't answer even longer ago.

"Niamh," the woman says, and her lips twitch as if she did not know it herself until just now.

She feels fate crumble around her in the moment, and as she stands, she hears an abandoned card crumple under her heel. 

_ How fitting. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope u have enjoyed my alyn backstory extravaganza !! :D if the game won't give it to me i WILL make it up!

**Author's Note:**

> i am @witchesgonewild on twitter and @alynshir on tumblr!


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